


The Third Time

by Philosopher_King



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Angst, Gallows Humor, Gen, Loki Angst, Loki Dies, Loki Feels, Loki snark, Loki-centric, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, Thor Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 20:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4934647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It appears that, as they say on Midgard, the third time is a charm, eh, brother?"  After the battle of Ragnarok, as Loki is dying -- for the third and final time -- he and Thor have a last conversation.  The phrase "cats all the way down" is uttered, oddly enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Time

**Author's Note:**

> Back when I wrote this, I suspected, considering past iterations of the Ragnarok storyline and Tom Hiddleston's expression of his (ill-founded!) worries that the fans will get sick of him, that Loki was going to be toast at the end of _Thor: Ragnarok_. Now that it has become very clear that Loki will be in _Avengers: Infinity War_ , this has become just an interesting characterization exercise rather than any sort of speculation about what will happen... at least in _Ragnarok_ ; no guarantees about _Infinity War_ or its sequel.
> 
> Anyway, here's my imagining (rather more drawn-out and contemplative than anything that would happen in the MCU...) of how Loki's final conversation with Thor might go. I was trying to be as vague as possible about the circumstances of the battle, except that Loki had something to do with it; and I made sure to kill him in a way that would allow for an extended chat.

After the battle, Thor found his brother sitting on the floor of the shattered throne room, his back against one of the few stretches of wall that remained upright, surrounded by the dead of both armies. Loki’s eyes were closed, his face ashen. Thor’s breath caught, and it felt like his heart had stopped for a moment. _Please, don’t be dead. Not again._

“Loki,” he said. Loki’s eyes snapped open immediately, but seemed to take a moment to focus. A dark bloodstain ran down the front of his coat from a deep wound in his left shoulder. “Thor,” he replied.

“We need to get you to the healing rooms,” Thor said sternly.

“No need,” Loki sighed, closing his eyes again.

Thor’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a serious wound,” he insisted.

Loki opened his eyes slowly and smiled with dry amusement, shadowed with something darker. “Yes, very.”

Thor shook his head as if to shake off the foreboding settling over him. “It’s serious, but it’s not fatal. A healer would still be of help.”

Loki’s smile broadened and the shadow darkened. “That’s where you’d be wrong.”

Thor’s heart froze. Loki continued: “You see, one of the demons had an enchanted blade. I had read about it before, so I recognized it. It prevents blood from clotting, so the wounds it inflicts never stop bleeding. The healers will be figuring that out soon enough.” He smiled again, but the amusement seemed tenuous. “I’m going to bleed to death slowly. As will the other poor sods the demon got to before I got to him. Only they don’t know it yet.”

Thor was silent for a few moments, trying to understand what he had just heard. He shook his head again. “You’re lying,” he said.

Loki quirked his mouth to one side. “That’s a fine thing to say to a man on his deathbed.” He glanced around briefly. “Death floor,” he amended.

Thor ignored Loki’s feigned indignation. “You’re going to make me think you’re dead, and then you’re going to show up again with some new scheme to win a kingdom. I know how this trick goes by now.”

Loki exhaled through his nose in what passed for a laugh. “As delightful as that sounds, I have no plans of that kind at the moment.” The amusement in his half-smile was growing increasingly fragile. “It appears that, as they say on Midgard, the third time is a charm, eh, brother?”

Thor let Mjölnir fall with a thud, dropped to his knee, and gripped Loki’s uninjured shoulder. “How could you say such a thing? I have never wanted you dead.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “No? And what of all the times you swore you would kill me if I betrayed you?”

“I have never wanted to kill you,” Thor reaffirmed with quiet intensity. “I only wanted my brother back.”

Loki’s mouth quirked into a half-smile again, but there was definite sadness in it. “I am so sorry that you got me instead.”

Thor looked at Loki seriously, and briefly tightened his grip on his shoulder. “You are who my brother turned out to be.”

Surprise registered briefly on Loki’s face before he composed it again. After a moment’s pause, he said matter-of-factly, “I’ve wanted to kill you. Many times.”

“I know,” said Thor. He let go of Loki’s shoulder and looked down.

“But I never wanted you dead.”

Thor’s brow furrowed. Loki laughed briefly at his confusion and said, “Agent Coulson was right about me. I lack conviction.”

Thor shook his head and muttered, “Sometimes I think Banner was right about you, too.”

“Oh? About what? That I’m a puny god? That I should be smashed repeatedly into a stone floor?”

Thor started to regret that he had mentioned it; he wasn’t sure how Loki would react. “He said—he said that your brain was a bag full of cats.”

Loki raised his eyebrows slightly and the corners of his mouth pulled down. Then the laugh he had been trying to suppress burst out. He winced when his shoulder moved, and his laughter subsided. “That is a remarkably apt description.” He added idly, “I’ve always liked cats.”

Thor didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t. Instead he asked, haltingly, “Is there somewhere you want to go where you’d be more comfortable? Your old chambers, or—”

Loki was shaking his head. “No. It hurts to move. And—if you move me, I’ll only bleed faster.”

Thor thought he glimpsed fear in his brother’s eyes. He chose not to think about it. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”

Loki gave another wan half-smile. “Shouldn’t you go find your friends or help with the wounded or whatever it is you heroic types do?”

Thor returned the half-smile, fighting an ache in his chest. “I thought that’s what I was doing.”

Loki snorted softly. “You know what I meant.”

“I do. Sif and the Warriors Three are well, or they will be. And I think there are enough people helping with the wounded. The looming destruction of Asgard truly brought the city together.”

The ghost of a laugh escaped his brother’s lips. The expression on Loki’s face was difficult to read. Beneath the thin mask of nonchalant good humor, Thor knew a storm must be raging, but he caught only glimpses behind Loki’s habitually well-guarded eyes: fear, hope, regret, gratitude…?

Thor cleared his throat. “Do you want me to stay?”

Loki narrowed his eyes. Thor immediately knew that had been the wrong approach, so he quickly amended: “I want to stay. Will you let me?”

Loki blinked. The mask flickered, then settled back into place. “I don’t see how I can stop you.”

Thor settled himself against the wall to his brother’s right, on the side opposite his wounded shoulder, and set Mjölnir down to his own right. They sat in silence for a few moments. Loki closed his eyes again, and Thor’s heart suddenly clenched.

“You know, last time, we never really got to talk,” he said, mostly just for the sake of saying something.

To Thor’s great relief, Loki opened his eyes. “Last time?” His face seemed clouded, the usual lightning-fast torrent of thought behind his eyes slowed by loss of blood. “Oh. You mean, the last time I died.” He looked down. “Don’t you still—blame me for that?”

Thor shrugged. “It was a nasty, cruel trick.”

“Yes, yes it was.”

“But I think the time to reproach you for it is past.”

“In my defense,” said Loki, “if you’d thought I was still alive, I would only have slowed you down. You couldn’t very well have dragged me with you to Midgard, and you didn’t have time to drop me off back in Asgard. And, hero that you are, you never would have left me wounded on Svartalfheim if I’d told you, ‘don’t worry about me, I can make my own way back.’”

Now Thor gave a quiet snort. “Yes, I’m sure you had only the best interests of the Nine Realms at heart.”

Loki’s smile was starting to look more genuine. “I have an infinite capacity for post hoc rationalization.”

Thor turned serious again. “Before, when you—I mean, when I thought you were— you said you were sorry. What were you sorry for?”

Loki looked startled. “I think you told me to stay with you, or something along those lines.”

Thor frowned. “Was that all? You said it three times.”

“Yes, all great affirmations and denials come in threes, don’t they?” Loki smiled and shook his head. “I was supposed to be dying. One can’t be expected to make a great deal of sense in those circumstances.”

Thor said nothing. Loki looked down at his hands. “I suppose—I was sorry for deceiving you.”

“Not for—anything you’d done before?”

Loki raised his eyebrows. “You mean that business on Midgard? I am sorry for dropping you out of the flying fortress in that cell. But you did have your hammer with you, so I never really thought your life was in danger. I just needed you to think it was.”

Thor sighed. “I thought perhaps you meant you were sorry for how things had ended up between us. I know I am.”

Loki looked down again. He licked his lips, choosing his words carefully. “Those foundations were laid a thousand years ago, and the wall was built up stone by stone over the centuries. We didn’t really see it until—shall we say—a great many more stones fell into place, over a very short span of time. But even if none of that had happened—the wall was still there. Eventually, stone by stone, it would have risen high enough to come between us.”

The tight ache in Thor’s chest had risen into his throat. He swallowed painfully. “So… you believe… there was never any hope for us?”

Loki seized eagerly upon an opening to break the serious mood that had fallen over the conversation. He smiled slyly. “Why, Thor, I never knew you felt that way.”

Thor considered rebuking him for hiding behind frivolity at just that moment, but he was reminded of a conversation they’d had just before his abortive coronation—just before everything had fallen to pieces. He had accused Loki of being incapable of sincerity. _Am I?_ Loki had asked, before (it seemed) proving Thor’s accusation false:

_I’ve looked forward to this day as long as you have. You’re my brother and my friend. Sometimes I’m envious… but never doubt that I love you._

Thor had placed his hand behind his brother’s neck and said, sincerely, _Thank you._ Then Loki—uncomfortable, perhaps, with the amount of sincerity being displayed on both sides—had quipped, _Now give us a kiss. Stop it,_ Thor had laughed, poking Loki playfully in the chest.

Now Thor just sighed. Was Loki covering his sincerity with a jest, or his lack of sincerity? Clearly Loki had _not_ been looking forward to Thor’s coronation, at least not in the way he had meant Thor to understand. But had he meant the rest of it? And did he mean what he was saying now, about the wall between them? Was he trying to sow discord, even now—to strike a parting blow at his enemy in the only way he still could? Or was he, in his peculiar way, trying to comfort Thor by telling him that nothing he could have done would have changed the outcome?

This was Thor’s last chance to seek truth from his brother, so he gave voice, haltingly, to his frustration. “You hide behind so many layers of lies and jests, secrets and schemes and illusions, that I never know when I am truly seeing _you._ If I ever have.” A cruel impulse overtook him, and he gave vent to it. “If there is anything beneath those layers that is more truly you.”

Loki was taken aback. “You have seen me. Truly.”

“When?” Thor pressed. Years’ worth of frustration had broken through a dam and were rushing out in a heedless torrent. “I thought, after Mother died, when I saw that you had destroyed everything in your cell—I thought I was truly seeing you then. But was that just another stratagem, to persuade me to trust you?”

Loki looked stung. Thor felt a pang of regret, but also a perverse joy in knowing that after all the pain his brother had caused him, he still had the power to cause pain in return. “Of course that was real. You know I—” _You know I loved her,_ he was going to say, but he changed his mind. “How could I know that you were ever coming?”

“I never know what you know, or how,” Thor shot back. “They say a lie is more convincing if it is seasoned with truth. But is it still truth, if it is used strategically to make lies more effective?”

Loki opened his mouth, then closed it again. Unsure what to say to the general question, he returned to the specific case. “You knew I wasn’t as—composed—as I appeared to be when you first saw me.”

“I didn’t know. I guessed.”

“You knew enough to guess,” Loki said shortly. “Listen—I understand why you’re asking all this. You want to know where it all went wrong before you lose the chance forever. And you want to know whom you’ll be mourning when I’m gone. So here’s your answer: it was all me—all the lies, the schemes, the illusions. I don’t believe in souls, and I don’t believe in true selves. My brain is a bag full of cats, remember? Well, it’s cats all the way down.”

Loki paused, trying to gather his strength; talking clearly took effort. He closed his eyes and attempted to breathe deeply, but it sounded ragged and shallow.

At last he continued, his voice more even: “I enjoy causing chaos, as you well know. I enjoy keeping people… off-balance, never knowing what to expect from me. But I also, truly, love, and hate, and desire, and envy, and regret.” Another pause. “My love of chaos, and my ambition, got Asgard into this mess. But I helped get us out of it again—I’ve given my life to help get us out of it. Out of love for the only home and family I’ve ever known, and a sense of honor that most of you thought I didn’t have.” Loki’s mouth tightened with pain; speaking so much had cost him. “Now can we please talk about something else? I’m the one dying here, and I’d prefer not to spend my last hour being interrogated.”

Thor was immediately ashamed of his selfish demand for answers. “I am sorry. I was—thoughtless.”

“Hmph,” Loki agreed.

“What would you like to talk about?” Thor asked, attempting to sound lighthearted.

“Oh, I don’t know. How do you fancy Norway’s chances in the World Cup next year?”

Thor blinked. “What?”

Loki laughed, and winced. The bloodstain had spread across the front of his tunic, Thor noticed with anxiety. “A bad jest. How fares your Jane Foster?”

“She is safe, and well.” Thor regarded Loki suspiciously. “Are you going to warn me away from her again?”

“No. I should with as much reason have warned you away from me—I was doomed from birth to an early death as surely as she was. And no, I don’t mean the—the _birthright_ my father by blood left me.”

“Loki…”

“Once again, Agent Coulson was right about me,” Loki said with an ironic smile. “It’s in my nature to lose.” He exhaled another short laugh. “I didn’t even manage to kill _him_ permanently,” he muttered.

_“What?”_

“Oh… never mind. What I wanted to say was: you know now what it’s like to lose. You’ve lost your mother, and now your father. And you’ve lost me—three times. Are you prepared to lose her, in some threescore years’ time?”

Thor considered the question. Slowly, he answered, “I think you were right, before. I’ll never be ready. But what choice do I have?” He swallowed. “I’m not ready now,” he said hoarsely.

Loki looked at him steadily. The talk of truthfulness must have had some effect on him, because he was allowing his fear and pain to show unguarded in his eyes. “Neither am I,” he replied, his voice surprisingly calm. “All those times I’ve faced death—courted it, even—I thought I was ready; but now I doubt that anyone ever is.” He swallowed, painfully. “Still, I’m glad you’re here.”

Thor smiled shakily. “I could not let you go to Valhalla and tell our ancestors that I let you depart alone.” Mischievously, he added, “Or that I was a better brother to you when you were only faking your death…”

Loki raised his eyebrows. “Valhalla? Really?”

“You have given your life courageously in battle, have you not? Where else would you go?” But Thor recalled what Loki had said to the Kursed dark elf after turning his own grenade on him, as he lay bleeding on the black sands of Svartalfheim: _See you in Hel, monster._

“I don’t believe I’ll go anywhere,” Loki said with a thin air of nonchalance. “I told you: I don’t believe in souls. I believe I’ll cease to exist once my brain stops working, and then my body will crumble to dust in the earth.”

Thor furrowed his brow, fighting tears. No wonder Loki had been so thoroughly shattered by Frigga’s death, if he had no hope that she would find happiness in another life, or that he would ever see her again. “I know not what to tell you about your soul, but I can tell you that your body will burn on the water, not crumble in the earth.”

Loki looked at him questioningly, his pale face strangely, sadly hopeful. “I thought the usual fate for traitors and usurpers was to be buried in an unmarked grave outside the city walls. You would give me an honorable warrior’s funeral?” He bit his lip. “You would set me on a ship among the very warriors who died for my mistakes?”

Thor clasped Loki’s right shoulder and said firmly, “You are a prince of Asgard, you were once her rightful king, and you have given your life to defend her. Your crimes are pardoned. You will have a hero’s funeral, my brother and my friend.”

Loki closed his eyes for a moment; when he opened them again they were unusually bright. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Thor let go of his brother’s shoulder and they sat together in oddly comfortable silence. Thor broke it once to ask, “What did you mean about not managing to kill Agent Coulson permanently?”

Loki sighed. “Lady Sif had some dealings with him while I was, er, filling in for Odin. I have no idea what happened. You would have to ask Director—ex-Director Fury.”

“Hmm,” said Thor, disgruntled. The silence resumed, until Thor, uncharacteristically bothered by a metaphysical question, asked, “Do you really mean what you said about not believing in souls?”

Loki looked at him with puzzlement and just a hint of scorn. “Of course,” he said.

“But then—at funerals, why do we see that shimmering mist rise from the boats before they go over the waterfall? What is that, if not the souls of the dead rising to Valhalla?”

Loki made an unimpressed grunting sound low in his throat. “Some trick of the healers who prepare the bodies. I suspect there’s some powder or oil in the boat that emits a shimmering smoke a certain amount of time after it ignites. Or maybe there’s a fuse so that it won’t catch fire as soon as the arrow strikes the boat—something like a firework.”

“Really,” Thor said skeptically. “So you never asked the healers how they did it?”

“No,” said Loki, sounding unconcerned. “Hmm,” said Thor again, this time feeling a faintly triumphant swell of hope. Loki didn’t _know_ the cloud of light was just a healers’ trick; and the fact that he had never asked meant that while he wasn’t willing to let go of his cultivated air of skepticism, neither was he willing to let go of the hope of life after death. Thor certainly wasn’t going to let go of the hope that Loki was wrong, that he was going now to join their mother and father to feast and rest in Valhalla, and that someday Thor, and Jane, would join them as well.

At some point Loki’s eyes closed again. They seemed sunken unusually deep in his too-pale face; all the bones stood out sharply, lined with dark shadows. Thor listened attentively to his shallow breathing. He wanted to reach out, to cradle his brother as he had in Svartalfheim. But he didn’t want to hurt Loki by moving him; and besides, he wasn’t sure Loki would allow it.

Suddenly, Loki’s eyes fluttered open. His breathing quickened. “I’m afraid,” he whispered.

As a child, Thor remembered, Loki had had vivid nightmares. After Odin decided that he was too old to come sleep in Frigga’s bed after a bad dream, Loki had started coming to Thor’s room instead and crawling into his brother’s bed. “Would you hold my hand?” Loki had asked once, his voice trembling. “Then, maybe you’ll come into my dream with me, and help me defeat the monsters.” After that, Thor had taken Loki’s hand every time he came into his brother’s room, pale and shivering, to take refuge from his nightmares.

Almost instinctively, Thor seized Loki’s hand. It was ice-cold. Loki looked at him, terrified, pleading. Thor gripped Loki’s hand tightly with both of his and held it to his chest. He knew that whatever dreams his brother was walking into, he couldn’t come with him. He was supposed to protect his little brother; but he couldn’t protect Loki from himself, and he couldn’t protect him now.

“It’s so cold,” Loki said in a small voice. His lips were white and trembling. A last breath escaped them, and then he went still, his eyes still half-open.

Still gripping Loki’s hand with his left hand, Thor reached out with his right to close his brother’s eyes. Then he gathered Loki’s limp frame into his lap. Knotting his fingers into Loki’s hair, he cradled his brother’s body against his chest and rocked silently forward, his heart feeling full enough to burst yet empty enough to collapse. He wanted to sob, to howl, but his throat would not open to let out his grief. He thought his heart had broken twice before—once, when he watched his brother let go of the staff that held him to the world and fall into empty space; and again, in Svartalfheim, when Loki’s eyes fell closed and his face went gray and his body grew still in Thor’s arms. He had thought that perhaps his heart would scar, or callus, and it would be harder to wound in future. But now it seemed that it was just the opposite: that like a broken bone, it never quite knit itself back up to its former strength, and it became easier to break in the same place. It felt like perhaps this time it would shatter so thoroughly that it would refuse to heal altogether, and he would be left limping inside like a man whose broken leg never set quite right. He could hear Loki’s voice in his head, saying with harsh irony: _The third time is a charm, eh, brother?_

But no—he knew his heart would have to break at least once more. _You’ll never be ready,_ said Loki’s voice in his head. _The only woman whose love you prized will be snatched from you._

 _And will that satisfy you?_ his own voice snarled back. _Satisfaction’s not in my nature,_ his brother’s bitter voice said in return. Thor hoped desperately that Loki had been wrong about that, too.

“We will feast with the victorious dead in Valhalla, my brother,” he whispered, before laying Loki’s pale, still body out on the ground. Dissatisfied, he pulled Loki’s dagger from the sheath at his hip, placed it on his chest, and laid his hands over its hilt. Then he rose and, turning toward the still-gleaming walls of the palace that remained standing, went to rejoin the victorious living.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments. Comments are awesome! Even if there was something you didn't like, please let me know. I know this fic is as old as the hills, but I'm still laboring in obscurity here and I will most certainly reply to your comment and treasure it in my soul.


End file.
